How will spacecraft navigate between the stars? Intergalactic pulsar-based GPS

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At the next nebula, take a right. Here’s a good one for you: When we eventually launch a spacecraft that’s capable of exploring the Milky Way, how will we navigate between the stars? According to some German researchers at the Max Planck Institute, we’ll use intergalactic pulsar-based GPS.

Here on Earth, of course, we use the American GPS and Russian GLONASS to ascertain our coordinates with a very small margin of error. We use a fairly similar system for tracking spacecraft in the Solar System: Using a network of Earth-based tracking stations, we can usually use triangulation to pinpoint a spacecraft’s location within a meter. There are caveats, though: Because our tracking stations are all here on Earth, and because of the low angular resolution of radio antennae, we only accurately track spacecraft that are moving away from Earth in a straight line — not very useful, when space is rather three dimensional.

What we really need for accurate interplanetary and intergalactic positioning is a network of tracking stations that are spread out throughout the universe, in a constellation around the spacecraft, just like GPS satellites here on Earth. Pulsars, according to Werner Becker and fellow researchers at Max Planck, could be exactly what we need.

Pulsars are neutron stars that rotate, emitting a beam of radiation. Just like a lighthouse, this radiation can only be seen when the pulsar is facing us — from the point of view of the observer, they pulse. The key, though, is that some pulsars, known as millisecond pulsars, rotate (and pulse) with incredible regularity — so much so that a clock based on the pulses of a pulsar can be more accurate than an atomic clock. These pulses can also be used to create a system that’s very similar to GPS.

Basically, by measuring the arrival times from three or more pulsars, and comparing their expected arrival time for a reference location on Earth, the German researchers say you can locate a spacecraft to within five kilometers (3.1 mi). The only real complication is that pulsars generally emit very long wavelengths, and the pulses are pretty weak, by the time they’ve traveled half way across the universe. As a result, pulsar-based GPS needs a large, expensive antenna — probably at least one meter in diameter. Your smartphone probably won’t ever be equipped with pulsar-based GPS, then, but for navigating spacecraft between stars and through asteroid fields, this could be exactly what we need.

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This is all based on fake and partial data, such a technology doesn’t take aliens and artificial stars and planets into accounts. The truth is way different from the lies.

VirtualMark

The fact that you do not understand how science works does not mean that it’s wrong. Pretty much every single scientific fact or discovery has been through countless tests and scrutinized by the scientific community. They don’t just pluck ideas out of thin air, instead everything is calculated and painstakingly measured.

It really annoys me when people don’t understand something and then declare it to be untrue. If it’s all lies, perhaps you could provide us with a better solution?

chojin999

I don’t understand ?

What are you talking about ?
This is not science, these people are talking nonsense fairy tales based on “official” so called theories.

A theory is not the truth if it can’t be checked.

And there is no hard evidence of pulsars.

The human population can’t travel near a pulsar.

VirtualMark

We don’t need to. Quantum physics predicts the existence of several phenomena in space. Like I said, if you understood it you wouldn’t be questioning it.

Remember that we only actually see a tiny percentage of what happens in the world with our senses. Why do primitive minds think that reaching out and touching something is the only way to prove it’s there?

chojin999

Prediction is no proof. Prediction based on a theory telling that that is predicting something that can’t be proved to be exact it’s a fairy tale. It’s not science.

VirtualMark

Ok chojin999, all of the scientists on Earth are wrong, and you are right.

So perhaps you could tell us all your solution to interstellar navigation? And explain what a pulsar is? Please, share your wisdom.

chojin999

None of these people telling fairy tales traveled in deep space. They are telling bull and crap. This is not science.

Looking at something that is hundreds, millions of light years away from your position and coming up with your own fairy tales calling those “official science” and “theories” with silly complex mathematical formulas based on just theories and personal fantasy it is not science, at all!

havor

Now your just Trolling.

Joel Detrow

So you mean to tell us that if you were chained to a tree and given a telescope, you wouldn’t be able to figure out tons of things about, say, a faraway beach habitat just by looking at it through the telescope?

Thanks for further confirmation of your intelligence.

chojin999

Because your telescope is able to give you high-quality pictures of a beach in a distant planet millions of light years from your position ,right?

Neon Frank

When will you unleash the fury of the Caps Lock and tell us all about creation?

havor

Man you really don’t know how science works do you?

A scientific theory is a bit different from a conspiracy theory.

The first is based on as many facts as possible to create a working theory, that is then put op for pear review, ware many scientist try to find hole’s or faults in the theory, based on how many uncertainties they can find, a theory is considered strong or weak.

All serious scientist acknowledge that the age of the universe is around 13.8 billion years old, there are competing theory’s how old precise, but if you ask any scientist to give a round Nr that would be it.

Literately everything in the universe is moving, But as long as you know the direction and speed objects move, including the pulsars, you can still precisely calculate ware you wane go.

If i take out my boat on the sea, and wane go from point A to B, my auto-navigation calculates, the position of the moving GPS satellites, and even the currents, and i still get ware i wane go.

How is this any different in space?

You my dear sir are the Fake, with your Fake assumptions, as your to ignorend to even understand basic science.

Go a join the creationism cult, you fit right in!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationism?

armstronghenderson

@chojin999:disqus – relax, brother. You can’t assume that technology or algorithms won’t continue to evolve. It is totally in the realm of possibility that this technology will progress by orders of magnitude by the time a spacecraft could actually use (or need) it. Next time, before you freak out and blow your load in a chat box, consider that simple solutions could negate your concern. In this case, assuming your position is valid, don’t you think it’s possible that computer scientists could easily solve for minimal movement of pulsars and unknown encountered objects by increasing the number of reference points as part of the calculation algorithm?

Amazing stuff, to me pulsars are some of the strangest things in the universe. They’re a neutron star that spins round so fast that the surface is travelling at a significant fraction of the speed of light. The gravity is so high that the atoms are ripped apart!

A couple of facts from the wikipedia page:

If you fell the distance of 1 metre on a neutron star, it’d take about a microsecond to hit the surface. And by that time you’d be travelling at 2000 mph.

Another interesting fact – one teaspoon of a neutron star weighs approximately 900 times that of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Scary stuff!

Joel Detrow

One teaspoon = 10,000,000,000 tons, as I learned it. The way I see it, neutron stars are to black holes what brown dwarfs are to stars.

matt_helm

Hmmm. I remember reading a Sci-Fi story about using this type of system…About 30 or so years ago!

This is so easy to do (relatively speaking, if your spacecraft is big enough to mount the sensors required) that’s it’s what I’d call a “No Brainer”!

Jeff Jones

Yep. These scientists should be chastised for trying to push something like this as their own new idea.

havor

Actually he dose not do that, he only worked how to use out a old idea, with real science to back it up.

http://www.hopy1.com/ hopy

I think that your perspective is deep, its just well thought out and really fantastic to see someone who knows how to put these thoughts down so well.

Neon Frank

“When we eventually launch a spacecraft that’s capable of exploring the Milky Way, how will we navigate between the stars? “

By that time I’m sure they’d rise an eyebrow and giggle at our ideas of the future, just as we do with 1930’s views of our future.

http://www.yepi2.co/ yepi

This is indeed a great site! Very informative and interesting to read.

The details are well-explained and very concise.

This is what I’ve been looking for. Thank

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